Thank you to Roku for sponsoring this list of 7 things all road trip loving families need and providing my readers with a chance to win their very own Roku Stick for their next family road trip.

My family and I love going on road trips. We chose a home in the beautiful Southern California mountains that’s 3 hours from Las Vegas, 3 hours from San Diego and 3 hours from Los Angeles.

It’s awesome being so central. It gives us every chance in the world to hop in the car and go on short road trips quite often. Hey, we even did a cross country road trip back in May that was pretty amazing.

Over the years and the abundant number of road trips we’ve taken, I’ve put together a list of 7 things that every road trip loving family needs.

Cooler

Whenever we go on a road trip, we always bring a cooler with us. The reason we are able to go on so many road trips is because we have figured out some tips for making them affordable.

One of those things is packing our own food. We like to bring plenty of snacks as well as sandwich and salad fixings with us. That gives us more money to do fun stuff since we’re not paying for overpriced restaurant food at every meal.

The first thing I do when we arrive at a new hotel room is set up the essential oil diffuser. I always put On Guard in first since it cleanses the air and gives our immune systems extra support – something we all need when we travel.

At night I diffuse lavender or a relaxing combination to help us sleep soundly. For some reason, I often have trouble sleeping in hotel rooms, and diffusing essential oils always helps.

Headphones for the Kids

This one is for the parents’ sanity. My girls always bring their tablets with us on road trips, and if they don’t have headphones we pay for it. It’s not my idea of a peaceful drive to hear kids’ games the entire drive.

Whether your kids have tablets, portable game systems or you have a DVD player in your car, you’ll want to invest in some good headphones for the kids. You can thank me later 😉

A Good Camera

I know, I know. Our phones have cameras on them now. That’s what my daughter tells me. Phone cameras are great for posting pictures of your trip on Facebook and Instagram, but I love taking pictures with a real camera.

Even though we do use our phone cameras all the time, our Nikon D90 comes with us on every trip. I love being able to capture memories with pictures, and having a good camera with us is part of that.

Road Trip Games

This is something you absolutely want to prepare ahead of time, especially if it’s a long road trip. When I was a kid, my siblings and I tried to see who could find the most states’ license plates or who could find all the letters in the alphabet on street signs first.

Zoë and Kaylee have their own games they’ve made up. Zoë said there are three that they play most of the time. They like to count how many school buses they can find and whoever spots the most wins. They play I Spy quite a lot. And they play another game that Mommy isn’t so fond of when we’re in an area with a lot of traffic lights. They like to shout “red light” when stop and “green light” when it’s time to go. They think it’s hilarious. Anything to avoid the dreaded, “Are we there yet?”

A Good Sense of Humor

Road trips rarely go off without a hitch. Sometimes you wind up in a room with one King bed instead of two Queens. Sometimes you forget your toothbrush or another necessity. Sometimes someone gets sick. Sometimes you just can’t stick to the schedule you set for your trip.

When you’re on a family road trip, it’s so important to keep a good sense of humor. When things go wrong, laugh about it and move on. So many of the memories are in the experience – good and bad. If you can laugh about the rough moments, you can turn them into good memories.

Roku Streaming Stick

We just recently added this little baby to our roadtrip arsenal. At home, we have Smart TVs, which is awesome. Even through all of our travels, we have only stayed in one hotel with a Smart TV that allowed us to log in to our Netflix account.

Now that we have a Roku Streaming Stick (retail: $49.99), we can take our entertainment with us. It’s so nice to be able to pull up Netflix on any TV with an HDMI port (and a room with high-speed Wi-Fi) and not have to shell out $15 to watch a movie in the room. It’s a huge money saving bonus.

The Roku Streaming Stick is not just for Netflix though. You can also watch Amazon Video, Hulu, HBO Now, Showtime, Google Play, YouTube, Pandora, PBS Kids and so much more with the Roku Streaming Stick (as long as you have a membership). There are actually 3,000 streaming channels available with more than 300,000 movies and TV episodes.

And I love how portable it is. It’s the size of a flash drive, but we keep it in the box it came in to keep it safe. And since it comes with a remote control and a charging cord, I like being able to keep everything together in one spot.

Another really cool feature is the Roku app. It lets you download an app on your phone to use as a remote, search for what you want to watch, cast movies from Netflix and YouTube, and even listen to what you're watching using ear buds connected to your phone.

We have 3 road trips coming up in the next several weeks, and my Roku Streaming Stick will be packed on each and every one of those trips so we can bring some of our entertainment with us.

Enter to Win a Roku Streaming Stick

One of my readers will win a Roku Streaming Stick ($49.99 value). Open to US only. Enter via the widget below. Giveaway runs through August 31, 2016 at 11:59 pm EST.

When we go on road trips, we always take snacks and water with us. It helps us not to stop at convenience stores to pick up things our bodies do not need:) If I had a Roku stick, we would use it in the living room to watch Netflix.

I would use Roku to access Netflix/Hulu. I don’t have cable, so it would be nice to catch up on some shows/movies, etc.

I find the best thing I do for a road trip is I make a list! Not only does it help with packing before the trip, but I take it with me so that nothing gets left behind – especially helpful if you are renting a house/cabin.

I would love to use a roku streaming stick to set up a tv in my toddler’s room for netflix on occasion. I also love the idea of taking it along when we travel! And I also ALWAYS pack a cooler on road trips or even most day trips, such a money saver!

I have roku at home and my road trips.Great in the country because our stations on Saturday and Sunday are not very good.Great for the kids always something they like.Would be great to win this for my grandkids when they come to visit.

We always bring plenty of drinks so we don’t have to go a drive thru and spend a lot of money. I bring everyones favorite drinks, even if they aren’t especially healthy or something we normally buy. It’s a treat and I don’t want to hear complaints about wanting to stop at a convenience store or drive thru. It helps.

We always bring: insulated water bottles and a drink cooler for refills, snacks/lunch, tablets, blank paper with coloring/writing implements, sunglasses, a light blanket (we use muslin swaddlers since they are so cool and airy), a few fave CDs in case the radio stations become too hard to chase down, GPS, charging station for tablets/phones in car… there’s more I’m sure. We haven’t taken our littles more than 5 hours yet and generally stay at timeshares with kitchens.

I would love to see if I could use the roku stick from my phone since my internet goes out so much. Oh and I never travel very far without a cooler with cold drinks and snacks. Even when traveling by plane, I travel with snacks in my backpack and another snack bag in my checked luggage. 🙂

I’d use the roku stick on road trips and at home in the kids’ rooms. We only have one tv that can access Netflix, etc. and we don’t have cable so it would be wonderful for them to have their own sanctuary to watch tv in.

I hit the dollar store before a road trip and pack a bag with little surprises for along the way. Getting antsy–little play thing. Doing really well–little play thing! It’s worked really well, and I never reveal how much I have, so if I only use 2 of 5 things i bought, I have 3 for the next time. Cheap and easy. Also lots of art supplies with a little box that doubles as a lap desk. 👍

My husband and I have 3 wild boys that would really benefit from this Roku product! Between camping trips and road trips visiting family across the US, this would be a wonderful tool to help entertain the family.

We would use the roku on our road trips. We take a few every year to visit family and for vacations. We have 4 kids so keeping them entertained for 12+ hours in the car can sometimes be a hassle, this would really help!!

This would be fantastic for hotel stays when my 3 kids are SO bored. We bring puzzles,board games and cards,but sometimes they just want to relax and watch a good movie! We also try to cut costs on trips by bringing our own food. We do eat out for like one maybe two big meals. We’ll bring donuts and oatmeal and maybe cereal for breakfast if there isn’t free breakfast at the hotel. Lunch is usually sandwiches and then dinner is out or something inexpensive or pizza in the room. Or we might eat a big lunch out ( hello lunch specials!) And save left overs or eat a light dinner in the room.

Great advice! I never thought of trying essential oils but considering the weird smell most motel rooms have, this is a great idea.

We went on many road trips in the US as a family. One thing that worked very well for us on our last trip was listening to an audio book together. My kids are 12 and 14 and we all enjoyed listening to The Martian together as we crossed Nevada.

I would use the roku stick everywhere. Home and hotels mainly. I always bring cards on a road trip and we made a map of the United States. We play the licence plate game and mark off the states we see. Each kids has a different color marker.

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